


Sleep of the Righteous

by OddityBoddity



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Drabble, Sad, between CA:TFA and CA:TWS, cryo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 04:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3714811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OddityBoddity/pseuds/OddityBoddity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sad little drabble about Bucky and cryo</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleep of the Righteous

 

It's getting harder to focus now. The world breaks up into the terrible fragments and he's sure, though he couldn't say how, that there's someone missing.

Everyone around him is strong. All of them have the hard eyes of blooded men, and most of them are physically powerful. In case he…

But what would he do?

"Asset," the handler says, and he is aware that the handler has said it before, and he is aware that he did not hear it because he was thinking. About the thing that is missing. A person who should be somewhere near enough for him to feel their warmth, but not yet touching.

"Asset," the handler says again and it's a third time, at least, and the word is followed with a backhand blow like punctuation. It knocks the fragments out of his head, and for an instant the ghost is gone and he is returning to base, and then there is something missing again. Something that should be near enough to warm his side but not quite touching. Something small and slight, but tough as wire.

"He's in and out," the handler says, and he says it to the man who nods, who is wearing a bow tie. There are a few people in this room. One of them is old, one of them is young and wears a bow tie, two of them have automatic weapons, one of them is the handler. And one is him. A person. The revelation comes to him like water breaking through a dam, first a trickle then a flood.

"Let's see what we can do," the man with bow tie says. He is not the ghost, the fragment, the thing that is missing, though he walks on the right side. "Okay, back him up, into the chamber."

"Back, Asset," the handler says and he takes a step back and then another, and then stops. He does not want to-

"Keep moving back," the handler says again, voice changing in pitch, becoming angry, and it's enough to set off some alarm buried in him, arouse his own sluggish heart and lungs, sharpen the focus of his eyes so that he can see with perfect clarity the fine stains on the handler's right hand sleeve. It's blood. Arterial spray that made it all the way to where the handler was standing and dampened the cloth. He did that, Bucky did that. Bucky.

"I'm-" Bucky starts and the handler moves fast, two hands shoving hard into Bucky's chest and sending him back three steps into a little chamber. A squeeze. He knocks his elbows on the metal, has to tuck his arms in close. He raises his hands to protect his head because it's never just one blow when the fragments come back to him, no. It is always a beating.

But the handler doesn't follow. Instead the door swings closed and falls heavily into place. _Clunk, clunk,_ and then the sigh of something exhaling. Something cold breathing through the seams and under hems of clothing, turning flesh to ice. He sees the frost gather on his own eyelashes, sees the ghost of his own breath fog the glass panel in the door. The air is so cold it hurts; he coughs, and the cold gets inside his lungs until he's shivering and it's misery and this, he thinks, is worse than winter in the Alps. It's a cold that burns, that makes bones ache, and flesh sting. It makes his throat spasm and his nostrils and eyebrows and eyelashes ice up. He coughs and it's familiar, that cold pain. Like the snow, after the train.

 _This is it,_ he thinks. _All this time, and it really is the cold that's going to kill me._

He closes his eyes and waits. They say when you die in the snow you stop feeling the cold. He waits, and the warmth comes, and he starts to think he's too warm, and it's August in Brooklyn and there's a someone golden sitting beside him in the shade, complaining about how the pastels are melting.

He smiles, and he thinks there's something in it, after all this; a great big fuck you to the people who've done this. He'll die like this, in a cold that feels like warmth, knowing Steve is somewhere safe. He'll die like this, with a smile on his face. He closes his eyes and lets the cold take him.

 

*

 

"So that's the ice?" Rumlow asks, nodding at the tank as the glass clears.

Pierce glances over at him and nods. "Never seen it before?"

"Not in action. He's never been this screwy before on my watch." Rumlow looks back at the chamber and scowls. "Christ, is he smiling?"

"The Asset sleeps the sleep of the righteous," Pierce says. "Like you and I should be doing. Come on," he says, and slaps Rumlow on the shoulder, "I'll buy you a drink."

 

 


End file.
